


b r i d g e

by evasive_thoughts (intrusive_plots)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Kinkmeme prompt fill, M/M, Size Kink, but also political and emotional kink i guess haha, why, why am i like this, why can't i ever just write the smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2020-01-12 05:09:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18439682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrusive_plots/pseuds/evasive_thoughts
Summary: "You've an injury," Solas remarked casually over his desk, absorbed in the large tome open atop it.Cullen set the last shallow crate of reports on his own desk, elbowed in against the round mural of the observatory wall, and hummed his dissent. "An old disagreement of posture, since my youth. No injury.""You might have to one day fight unimpeded, and the list in your step shows worse after stairs. Club foot? Missing toes?" Solas glanced up with a cool inspection, book falling shut. "No... knees, I wager. Or an injury of the hip. Bucked from a horse?""Not an injury," Cullen corrected again, but his smile was warm for this rare approximation of concern. "Armors tend to carry poorly on me, when we have to add layers beneath for warmth. The limp will abate as the weather improves.""A rhuematosis," Solas accused quietly, eyes narrowing. "I'm no healer attempting to ply you with tonics, but there's no shame if you've a disability.""Disability..." Cullen mused, gazing off into the middle distance, smirk wry. "That's one way to put it."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ♦ [original prompt](https://dragonage-kink.dreamwidth.org/93509.html?thread=366192453)  
> ♦ Cullen has an embarrassingly large cock and the men in Skyhold want a ride.  
> ♦ Bonus points for Cullen being able to go for multiple runs.
> 
> I mis-posted in the k!meme and decided to host the fiction here, to avoid further threaded comment confusion.

Skyhold wintered about as well as it was designed to - blocked in, shored up, swaddled by the mountains and all those swathes of heavy blued snow. The belly of the keep itself was vast and deep for the stores the rest of the year was supposed to yield - but had been filled instead with all the hard fixings of the Inquisition itself, inedible armors and unpalatable artifacts and the unchewed wood-and-metal of bedframes, doorframes, refugee bodies and wall-crevice cookfires with little enough to cook.

Montilyet (Josephine, Josie) had convinced the nobility to winter in their own territories, which had seen Skyhold relieved of nearly half its standing guard force - a necessary vulnerability if they were going to stretch their supplies until the mountain roads could thaw. So Skyhold sighed out half its population, then pulled its remaining crowd in close and tight, efficiency for the cost of coal and firewood, closing the distance they'd have to otherwise travel the hard tack, filling rooms and patching walls and counting grains and all.

These were Fereldens, largely. They were used to lean living and unfriendly winters, and who among them were not of Ferelden borders were yet assured by the company, assured by the ease with which belts tightened and bedrolls merged. The Officers of the Inquisition set their own examples, too, forfeiting the luxuries of independence for shared quarters, shared meals, squires under the wings of the more popular soldiers, soldiers under the wings of the more popular captains, under the wings of the more popular generals, and so on. The clerical half of Skyhold, those unused to military cooperation had not yet drawn together, no matter their country of origin.

Mages, for starters, were used to cold stone rooms and individually sourced hearthfires and would rather see themselves in tents on the ramparts than to share elbowspace with an elementally volatile comrade or three. Clerics were adrift within their meagre chantry crowds, more ready to see to the needs of the flock than to demand any charity for themselves; and the coin-counters and stocking scribes were as thinned on confusion without the lords and ladies around to see them to some feather pillow at some noble set of heels.

But Cullen knew it was only a matter of time for pride and confusion to give way to the more animal requisites of survival - the mages would bow to the invite of the Templars, if only because the rampart towers kept fires better than tent canvas; the clerics would resettle their stations and the scribes might demure themselves underfoot to whomever was left to suffer it and the problem would resolve itself naturally, no need for any overt tasking despite Montilyet's snapping gnaw for scripted order and surety.

"We might set the example," Cullen offered with a sigh, folding under the imploring gaze of their Inquisitor, whose storied bedchamber had been the first casualty to the benefit of the Chargers. "Solas?"

A flicker of... well, maybe annoyance, if Solas was ever capable of descending to such, passed over Solas' wind-burnt cheeks and he shifted his weight, slim hands folded behind his back. "And you ask me, because you are Templar, and I am mage." And Solas slid a flat-eyed regard at Dorian in all his Tevinter pomp, and then their dear Lavellan, with his wild feathered Dalish furs and bone diadems and focused, owlish glare; and Solas hummed low in the back of his throat, chin up. "And harmless."

Dorian scoffed, mirth glassing behind thick eyelashes. "Compared to Madame de Fer, yes."

Cullen's brow crumpled. "Well, I'd say you rather hold more in common with _our_ mages than, well," he tossed a gloved hand out, to Dorian's Tevinter nobility and Lavellan's free Dalish privilege.

"I've never been in a Circle, either," Solas reminded gently. Josephine tapped her pen on her ledger. "That would weigh in our favor, actually. What better example, than Templar seeking shelter with apostate?"

Dorian laughed out loud.

Cullen glanced twice. "We expect the mages to come in from the cold, not the Templars to join them on the walls, Josie."

Their Inquisitor huffed, sharing conspiracy in a glance with Leliana, and pulled himself from the throne to a stiff-kneed stand. "And we expect the circle mages to forfeit their hard-won independence, for a thicker stew and warmer beds? Or are we asking the Templars to forfeit such, in the name of their duty, to better corral our mages? Which would be the better show of support; which would offend the least?" It went unsaid that the mages couldn't simply band together, or carve out a space for themselves within Skyhold that wouldn't endanger whomever shared the walls - mages tempted demons the least when they were separate, or tempered by Templar ritual (as was the safeguard in circles).

Cullen sighed. "None of us are Templars, technically. It's as unfair to hold my fellow defectors to their old vows as it would be to expect our mages to tow the line." He nodded at Solas, who was looking elsewhere. "I'll set the example, and trust in the good hearts of the men and women who followed me here, to safeguard their wards. With or without the promise of obeisance."

Solas wore his distaste like a cat, silent and stiff and Lavellan elbowed him, shouldering in with a muttered Dalish assurance. These cooperations couldn't be forced, but they could be demonstrated, and if that meant a small concession of nomadic independence for a season, well. There was plenty of space in Solas' corner of the keep for a Commander's trappings of office; it wasn't like they had to huddle into a tent atop a frigid wind-swept wall, and Solas could always sleep in the observatory if Cullen snored. "I suppose I'll have to come off as charitable," Solas suggested, to Leliana's nod.

Now it was Cullen's turn to look displeased. "I'm not going to try especially hard to change anyone's mind, but the mages will need my people beside them if they expect to gather within the walls instead of atop. That goes without saying, and they know it - else why would they have spread out across the ramparts?"

"Between the crenel towers," Leliana continued. "Which house our Templars. And not along the bottom of the walls, between the yard towers which house our craftsmen. The job is half done."

Cullen sighed, rubbed his forehead. "I... stationed the Templars in those towers, specifically to bracket our mage forces. The job is even less done than you think."

Leliana's pale eyebrows rose, just a fraction.

"Which is why you volunteer yourself," Solas chuckled, a dry sound. "I see."

**  
: : o : : O : : o : :**

  
"You've an injury," Solas remarked casually over his desk, absorbed in the large tome open atop it.  
  
Cullen set the last shallow crate of reports on his own desk, elbowed in against the round mural of the observatory wall, and hummed his dissent. "An old disagreement of posture, since my youth. No injury."  
  
"You might have to fight unimpeded, and the list in your step shows worse after stairs. Club foot? Missing toes?" Solas glanced up with a cool inspection, book falling shut. "No... knees, I wager. Or an injury of the hip. Bucked from a horse?"  
  
"Not an injury," Cullen corrected again, but his smile was warm for this rare approximation of concern. "Armors tend to carry poorly on me, when we have to add layers beneath for warmth. The limp will abate as the weather improves."  
  
"A rhuematosis," Solas accused quietly, eyes narrowing. "I'm no healer attempting to ply you with tonics, but there's no shame if you've a disability."  
  
"Disability..." Cullen mused, gazing off into the middle distance, smirk wry. "That's one way to put it. But no, not an arthritis either. No past sprain or break, just a disagreement of posture." He shrugged within the confines of his heavy plate, fur ruff and the dark drape of breach robes whispering against metal. "I thank thee for the concern, at any rate." And here Cullen remembered his old grievance with mages - no matter what stripe, young or old, schooled or wild, they were always, without fail, so damned  _curious_.  
  
Solas conceded the end of the conversation with a nod, and slid the book aside as a scribe approached with the afternoon's tea.  
  
Cullen was surprised enough to remark - "I didn't think apostates took tea." Which was as much a matter of convenience as it was of station - mages on the run hardly had the provisions or the leisure, and the laboring peasantry never wasted daylight if they could help it, a meal in the morning to break fast and a meal at night to end their toil.  
  
"They don't," Solas assured, unfolding his hand at the disarray of Cullen's desk, then stepping away from his own, hands rested behind his back. "I'm to play the gracious host, aren't I?"  
  
Cullen coughed to cover his startle - really, he had no reason to harbor any assumptions on Solas' temperament; for all he knew the man was as likely to knit scarves and feed pigeons as he was to ruthlessly slay Templars in pursuit, and 'standoffish' never necessarily meant callous, as any member of the Inquisitor's more immediate circle could attest.  
  
Solas drifted from the desk to better watch Cullen's (okay, yes, limping) approach. "You're not so old that you need to hobble around, defective posture or no."  
  
"Maybe I like the illusion of distinguishment," Cullen challenged, leaning his hip gingerly against the desk to pluck his way through the tea tray.   
  
"And you prefer to stand," Solas continued, shrugging deeper into his large tattered cowl to watch Cullen fix a small clay cup of tea. "Lower spine? Pelvis? By posture, you mean alignment?"  
  
"If you so much as poke me," Cullen warned, laughing. "But no, none of that. Nothing so dire." He holds the cup out, watches Solas consider, watches Solas take the cup, under-handed, watches Solas tilt the cup to stir the dregs at the bottom of the ambered water. Then Cullen arranges a cup of his own, nibbling on a small dried fish. "I suppose it would be impolite, to leave your question unanswered."  
  
"I prefer to deduce," Solas amended, then sipped the tea with a thoughtful frown. "We'd soon run out of conversation, if you simply gave away the answer. Is it extra toes?"  
  
Cullen scoffed, and sampled his tea, muttering against the rim of the cup, "No, none of those either."

  
**: : o : : O : : o : :**

  
Solas once espied a similar limp in Varric, out in the field as they followed Lavellan down a rocky mountainside, and made an inquiry once they'd struck camp.   
  
"I know yours is from an arrow just above the boot," Solas began, sat forward on the log by the cookfire, elbow on knee. "But I've seen that same stagger on our Knight-Commander, after a facing-down of a flight of stairs, though he claims no injury to explain it."  
  
"T'chuh," Varric grunted over his bladder-flask of mull. "Cullen limps under the burden of the massive set of stones it'd take to boss the Herald the way he does, and you know it. That, or he's got a bunion."   
  
"I've guessed every malady below the knees, but he assures it is only a matter of physical alignment, and nothing to do with the spine."  
  
Varric raises an eyebrow. "Good Gods, but here I'd thought bunking with a high officer of the Templar order would be  _dull_. You crazy kids and your wild postulations, you."  
  
"Probably a trick hip," the scout at Varric's elbow added. "If it's stairs that bother him."  
  
"In all honesty," Varric insisted, though the glint to his eyes suggested anything but, "It's a verifiable third leg. Never sits well in the strop of all that armor, and there's nobody as can pull off a dignified readjustment-squat whenever the ol' horsecock slips the stirrup."  
  
Solas scowled faintly at the derailment, while the rest of their company chuckled or scoffed.  
  
"Got that horsecock attitude, though, don't he?" A camp hand beside Solas prompted, rubbing her hands together to warm at the fire. "All quiet and stern, and never makes a pass, never has anything to prove to anyone. 'Walks soft, carries a big stick', is what we'd say in the village."  
  
Solas tucked his chin behind his high cowl to hide the wry twist of his lips, because - well, he rarely considered shemlen physiology in all its crude inefficiency, but the theory fit (as did Cullen's confidence that Solas might never have guessed as much on his own, as they were the two of them much too formal to trespass the topic). "I'll be sure to credit you for the guess," he threatened Varric, who blinked wide.  
  
"Well! I'll always appreciate the credit, Chuckles."

* * *

 Solas did not pass the estimate on to Cullen, tactically bereft the need to ever do so, and indeed they rarely had to suffer each other's company for how often Solas was called to the field under the Herald's anxious need to surround himself with fellow elvhenan - and here Solas had plenty of time to consider the difference between elvish physiology in all its nimble comforts; and human bodies as gangly, solid things, clumsier even in the more aptly trained scouts, more animal in the most objective sense of the word, ill suited to the swaddling of furs or padded under-armors, shems with all their limb-hair and sweat, and yes a larger set of breasts could not so comfortably stand the chestplate, and if the cod plates hung a little lower, a little looser than elf or even dwarven armors, well.  
  
Humans were exaggerated in their curves and cants, where elvhenan bodies, even the broader, squatter of them, kept their trim symmetry. (They generally wore softer armors, too, the elves, and that spoke of something, about comfort and security and who valued what more, but -)   
  
It was the Iron Bull, actually, who startled Solas clear out of his cocoon of carefully shored prejudice - Iron Bull who was the most like an animal of all of them, however uncharitable it might have been to consider as much - Bull who, after a particularly rousing counter-strike through snow-choked woodlands, once the last of the Red Templars had fallen under the snapping break of combined magics (and here Solas was overcome with pride in their Herald, perhaps too jubilant himself at their clean victory) - Bull whooped, and, no sturdy pair of legs nearby with which to knock foreheads, strode up between Lavellan and Solas to slap-grab an arse in each hand, curling them both roughly up in an embrace with a hefting shake, while booming laughter rung out between the trees, startling snow from the boughs.  
  
Lavellan wriggled free nearly immediately, cursing up a blue storm of oaths, swatting his staff against a horn and all down Bull's chuckling ribs on the retreat. Solas had been too shocked to react - of an air that usually commanded complete autonomy, and then unable to draw an experience to compare this to, this embrace, except maybe when a Ferelden hound had leaned against his hip wiggling its massive ribs with the ferocity of its own wagging stub-tail, and what had Solas done, except pat the beast?  
  
Solas patted the beast, dangling legs crossed at the ankles as if the hand under his arse were only a tree branch for the perching, the generous swell of muscle that he was pressed to exceedingly warm against the front of his ribs to the tops of his knees. He was taken aback when Bull met his eye, the late realization that he was in the arm of a 'who' and not a 'what' - and this all because it had been years, actual  _years_  since he'd suffered this kind of physical camaraderie, as absorbed in the fade and various related campaigns as he was.  
  
Bull did not set Solas down for a few steps yet, eye shining and grin smug as he strode to rejoin their party.  
  
Bull's supporting hand curled a little tighter and Solas squawked, pushed against the armored plate of Bull's shoulder to free himself from the reverie. There were old stories of mages seducing spirits, spirits as large and monstrous as the gods they liked to imitate, elder mysteries with the heads of bears or the lower bodies of deer. In that brief pause before Bull set him to his feet, Solas could imagine this were only another type of spirit, over-eager for connection, ancient and powerful and so lonely it might draw an ache to Solas' bones.  
  
But it was just Bull, just some raucous misguided mercenary who got handsy with anything that could consent, and though Solas was laughing as he pushed himself away, he was also... disappointed. Ancient and powerful and so lonely there might have been an ache.  
  
"Not so old and sour after all, eh Sparkles?" Bull congratulated, dusting his heavy hands together.  
  
Solas feigned a sore back, arching in a stretch to reassure Lavellan's startled glare. "Plenty of both, thanks Bull."  
  
Their Herald all but deflated in relief - and whapped the flat of Bull's shoulder with his staff to further avenge Solas' dignity while Sera recovered from her gigglefit.  
  
"Be like watching a frog try to make it with a fish," Sera quipped out, glee hitching her voice - "Get it?  _Bull_  frog?" Voice cracked, shivering with a suppressed cackle, " _Cold_  fish!"  
  
Solas hummed, taking the criticism in stride as they made a slow and steady climb back up to the road. When he was younger, he might have tried harder to win physical favor with the people of this realm, but such vanity was beyond his patience, and the memory of the people he had truly cared about, and lost, had always been too fresh a wound to go throwing himself carelessly into beds with strangers. There had been so many years running, wandering really, and now the people with whom Solas found himself had become a little more than strangers, familiar enough and comfortable enough to go laying hands on a body that Solas nearly forgot was his own.


	2. Chapter 2

Cullen could sometimes feel the Herald's attention like a blind man could feel the heat of a candleflame, even if the line of sight between them was crowded, or broken by a wall. This was only his sensitivity to magical focus, and to the credit of his career was Cullen almost desperate to earn Lavellan's trust, both that their Inquisitor was a mage  _and_  that he was a Dalishman, and all the wrongs between their two factions as deep a gulf as could ever demand crossing.

Cullen could not yet discern if Lavellan's intense focus regarding him was that of suspicion or resentment or only that mage-bedamned _curiosity,_ matching Solas in dogged interest should Cullen's step hitch a little funny on the way down the great hall.  
  
The threat then was that Lavellan actually  _was_ a healer, with all the single-minded energy of that station, doubled up on that hard-nosed, Dalish caravan tenacity.

Besides that, the Dalish were careless about their personal boundaries -- if you were within a certain trusted circle, yours was a body forfeit to embrace; and Cullen had seen Solas upended from his dignity enough mornings to know that circle was fast approaching his own persons (should he prove muster against Lavellan's study, that was, and if the price to pay for the Herald's trust was an awkward hug or two, well, so be it).  
  
Solas only ever queried after Cullen's health in that coldly detached ponder of his, but Lavellan had taken to downright  _bully_ Cullen about his (hardly noticeable) limp, and this evening had Lavellan brought Master Parvus along for support, the fiend.  
  
"Might as well let him inspect you," Dorian shrugged, quite departed from the argument with a cool jealousy, Lavellan as of yet unwooed by circle wit or Tevinter flash (the wise woodland thing).  
  
"Might as well take a swim, Maester Parvus," Cullen ordered back, Ferelden and Templar sensibilities thoroughly offended by everything Dorian exampled, that Magister arrogance and high-born insouciance.  
  
Cullen's sniping was a rare failure of composure which snagged at Lavellan's concern, dragged that concern down to glaring dismay. "Painful enough to shorten your temper," Lavellan insisted, all but chasing Cullen through the door to the dimly lit observatory.   
  
Dorian followed only as far as the observatory door, there to rest his shoulder against the archway, arms crossed, bored - and anyway that made it all the easier for Cullen to assuage Lavellan's concern, which for all his pester really was a simple medical query with a simple medical answer.  
  
"It  _is_  only a discomfort," Cullen explained, quietly in case Solas lay within the bedroom past the observatory's painted cave. "But if it will put you at ease, I'll allow the examination." And let the Inquisitor's authority be the final word against any future concerned parties, Maker willing. Cullen knocked on the door to the bedchamber, unsurprised to find the room empty, as Solas slept more readily in the cave proper (with all its hanging baubles and standing artifacts easing his passage to the Fade) and it was early in the night yet. The door was nudged wide to let Lavellan step through and Cullen followed, tugging the buckles of his gloves loose.  
  
Lavellan helped, for what helping could be done, well used to the trappings of heavy shem armors from his practice in the field, fingers quick but firm, professional detachment steadying the air between them. A standing rack kept the armor's shape, to which Cullen helped Lavellan steady the uniform's heavier pieces, Cullen's mouth pulling back to banish the grin that threatened its warmth just behind his eyes. Lavellan was... _thin,_ in the way that elves could sometimes be, and slight of mass in the way that mages could sometimes be, which meant that Lavellan was thin even for an elf, and Cullen distantly realized that Solas outstripped their Inquisitor for breadth and strength, as much travel and carry as he'd had to do on his own. Lavellan, tall and willowy and imposing compared to any of the starved, inner-city el'vhennan of Ferelden, had traveled with an entire caravan to pamper him for haul and hunt, and had grown to near enough Solas' age with none of the weathering of it, a skinny whip of a man who most reminded Cullen of the tower mages he had known in his youth.  
  
Cullen sighed in relief as Lavellan deftly unbuckled the stiff leather under-armor, and eased back to a careful sit on the squat wooden stool beside the wash basin, layered in the wools and cottons of their winter assignment. This put Lavellan taller than Cullen for once, which seemed right, somehow, if only for the comfort of the inspection.

"Light us a fire,  _lethalin_ ," Lavellan called to the half-shut bedroom door, past which Dorian was perusing Solas' bookshelves, and Cullen had to blink twice, since he was certain that was a Dalish endearment -- which contradicted the general air of frosty mistrust between Lavellan's self-composed hedgemage and Dorian's pompous magister.  
  
"You aren't talking to  _me_?" Dorian called back, after a beat.  
  
"Aye," Lavellan shared a glance of mutual exasperation with Cullen, and tossed his hand up to ask Cullen shed his wools to the waist, speaking still at Dorian out in the observatory. "Forgot my boots again this morning, and it is colder here than I supposed," he lied easily, which shouldn't have impressed Cullen so much, but did.  
  
Dorian answered the summons without further word, gathering the door shut behind himself to trap what heat the flued stone pit might provide.   
  
Cullen almost left the stool to stack the wood from its closet, but it had been years since he'd built firewood piles for a room of mages and the flinch of that memory was warmer than he would have expected -- a simpler time, maybe, with fewer responsibilities, and ever more possibilities, fewer enemies in the world, more friends.  
  
"I know how to build a fire, Ser Knight," Dorian assured, chuckling as he caught Cullen's terse study of the wood Dorian had thus far piled. "Yes, build, not just light. You forget that I've been on my own since I've had legs long enough to carry me, did you?"  
  
Cullen blinked, stirred from his memories. "Hm?"  
  
"Forward," Lavellan demanded, swatting the flat scarred plane of Cullen's shoulder.  
  
Cullen perched forward, elbows on his spread knees, chuffing his hands together to summon heat, determined not to shiver as Lavellan prodded down the sides of his backbone, checking for misalignment of vertebrae, or swelling. "In all honesty, Maester Parvus, I did not know that, and it wouldn't have mattered if I had. It was our station," Cullen's hands joined in front of his chin, breath ghosting warm over the red burn of his chapped knuckles, "To tend to the tower mages. We were as much caretakers as we were jailers, and I confess the habit is difficult to depart."  
  
Dorian scoffed, sinking himself down to a lazy sprawl on Solas' unused wooden cot beside the fire pit, propped upright on his elbows, knees bent over the edge. "Which habit? The caretaking, or the jailkeeping?"  
  
Cullen's defense was interrupted by his sharp hiss of pain as Lavellan dug both hands into his lower back. Lavellan's dense, lean weight pinned Cullen's back to keep him forward as something was readjusted in Cullen's lower spine -- and maybe he'd given himself a misalignment after all, favoring his limp as he'd done.  
  
Dorian tossed a flame into the pit to light his artful stack of firewood, and this casual display of staffless magic was so deeply unsettling that Cullen forgot to complain about his aches. Dorian caught Cullen's disconcerted glare and let his head wag back to laugh, teeth white, "And you're Ferelden, too, I keep forgetting. Did you see nothing as fantastic in Kirkwall? It was a Port Town, wasn't it? A whole entire variety of peoples to be found in a Port Town."  
  
"I... knew a talent as yours, in Kirkwall, yes," Cullen answered easily, well trained in civil discourse to put mages at ease, favor their trust, curb defenses or upsets. The side effect of this was that Cullen came off as polite, and open, and maybe even a little bit difficult to rout. "... And at Kinloch, come to think. I never did get used to it. I don't think I was supposed to."  
  
Lavellan grunted his interest, draping Cullen's linen tunic over his shoulder to bid him redress. "Dorian is talented even among the people of his station, da'shem.  His is a rare command, as much as he'd rather not humble us muddy lowlanders than boast of it." He crossed his arms to lean a bony elbow atop Cullen's shoulder, resting his weight. "Who were those talented mages you knew? Did they follow you from Meredith's defeat? Might we find a correspondence with them, would they lead any ready recruits to the Inquisition?"  
  
Dorian's scowl was immediate - first, for the underhanded compliment that Lavellan had needled him with, and then for the line of questions that so over-ran his no doubt witty repertoire. "Let's not haunt the old boy, love. They'd be here already, if any of that were so; if they yet lived."   
  
But Cullen was still, and quiet, the heels of his palms braced on the thick stout edge of the stool, gaze distant. 'Love', well. Ah. "Leliana would know them both, I should think. Or at least how to find them." He shook his head slow and wondering, then pushed himself to a stand, coughed once to recover as Lavellan's arm slid from his shoulder to reprimand him in the ribs. "It is a fantastic array of people I've come to know after all, Ser Parvus, even before Kirkwall's worldly ports." To Lavellan, who lifted his chin in concerted effort to recover the height advantage he'd lost, "Thank you, for the pummeling. I'm much improved, and there are inventories that need categorical shrift."  
  
Lavellan studied Cullen up and down doubtfully, half turned toward the creak of Solas' cot as Dorian left it. "But if we aim to summon those with whom you and Leliana have in common, and they are mage, a Kirkwall and Kinloch each to the group, and both of a talent enough to hold some fame - well," he husked a Dalish oath, then scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, a feather fluttering against its dark braid, "they might have arrived already, as soon as last month."  
  
"Names would help," Dorian drawled, not yet chancing the open of the door, in case Lavellan was trying to keep Cullen in, prevent him from excuse or escape. There was a distinction to the air of the room, now, something sad and distant and wire-sharp.  
  
Cullen only chuckled, a practiced removal from conflict. "If they were smart, they would neither of them use their actual names."  
  
"But names by which you might know them," Lavellan pressed.  
  
Dorian, again, rescued the obvious - "And here our Knight Commander has done nothing to conceal himself, his station, his past, his title nor his name." He tugged the door open, ending the volley. "If our celebrity mages wished his attention, they'd know where to seek it."  
  
Lavellan flinched. "You aren't a Templar any more," he argued, brow furrowed.  
  
Sadness glassed behind Cullen's eyes, and he tilted his chin to the side to soften the painful truth - "But I was, when I knew them. When they knew me."  
  
The fire caught on a pocket of sap, spat.   
  
Sputtered.   
  
Flared.  
  
"Do they at least know each other?" Dorian said, quite impatient with being left out. "Are they bigger than a bread box?"  
  
Lavellan's mouth firmed, and he took in the room, the duo of shems who were more alike than different, and visibly decided to unlock something within himself, a looser line in his shoulders, a soft release of the tension about his eyes. "Garret Hawke, famously staffless Champion of Kirkwall, joins our mages on the ramparts, half now in the crenel towers with our _pala'din_ \-- which is my people's word for Templar, and that might suit our difference from your old Order." He sighed, bracing, jaw clenched around a brief seize of doubt. Then, "Blackwall hosts a fellow Warden who came to us with one of Leliana's summons; they quarter in the loft above the smithery. _Ma'serrenas,_ da'shem, but this mage gave no familiar title or rank, only that he did know Leliana, and has given Seeker Pentaghast a wide berth. The name he went by was Ain Lo'Innoch, and he was an apostate escaped on route to Aeonar when he was conscripted to the Grey Order, before the Blight."  
  
And Cullen didn't flinch -- was too well trained to flinch, even in this intimate space, with these intimate reveals. "I see," he said, low and leading, and pulled his arms through the sleeves of his woolen jerkin, belted it in tidy rote sweeps and ties, and his hands only shook nominally, and perhaps even only just from the cold. "Ferelden Circle, then?"  
  
"By his accent, I'd gather. He hearkened a word for Kinloch, which you've spoken on, and in the field his was as rare a talent as we've seen in Dorian, to the letter."  
  
Dorian scoffed from the doorway, leaned against the jamb as if to guard their assumptions. "Ah, I know that one. No staff," he says, holding an arm out to wag his fingers, " _And_  only one arm. I might have seen a fly caught past Solas' dropped jawr. He might have swooned. I know I did."  
  
"Elven, then," Cullen guessed on Dorian's preferences if not Solas' exclusive tastes, wry. "Yes," he exhaled, all the heavy tensions in his chest suddenly light, loosed. "That would be Surana, Hero of Ferelden."


	3. Chapter 3

Blast.  
  
Blast, hell, and double fucking _flames,_ was Cullen in for a circus. He could see the approaching chaos like sailors could see the storm on the horizon, three perfect winds converging over open sea, except the winds were mages and the sea was the cluttered stretch of rampart he'd ventured atop today to answer a passing curiosity on the state of his men (women, 'pala-din', whomever). Only to find that well, yes, the mages had tendered themselves quite peacefully back within Templar rank, if Templar rank also meant Templar fire-tending and bed airing and candle trimming; Templar cooking and Templar furniture moving, Templar garment stitching too for all Cullen knew.  
  
Cullen bit his curse in half and made a spry enough step for someone as armored as he (armored, and, in all honesty, getting too old to be). He shuffled behind the taller stack of carpets on its way to the assimilated tower (crenel tower, of the wall that was - not 'Tower' as in 'THE Tower', the Kinloch Hold that had so colleged Cullen's first years). Cullen did not, to his pride, stoop or hide himself any further, and only made a casual show of leaning against the cold stone wall to purvey down the way he'd come, as if awaiting someone there for some errand. He was very good at looking busy whilst standing still, a honed Templar talent for all the posting in doorways they had to suffer.  
  
Aen Surana's laugh was low and loud and closer to a 'shem' cadence for all his lifetime spent in Greigor's custody (it was also supposed that one of Surana's parents might have been a half-blood, for the gravel Ferelden crack to his voice, and his height, and the largeness of his personality). If Surana's laughter was the warning thunder of the figurative storm gathering over the horizon, then the darkening cloudcover was to the credit of Lavellan's answering hush.  
  
Cullen did his best not to listen in. He knew well that particular rain at sea, and would merely have to weather this drudgery as he had in The Tower; suffering silently, head above water while the mages rained gossip and all manner of playful humiliations.  
  
"You're goddamn joking," Dorian swore, uncharacteristically - and those were the three winds, converged; mages all, damnably curious and thrice as invested in _Cullen_ of all people.  
  
"I jest you not," Aen assured, putting on airs to gently mock Dorian's lapse in decorum. "The limp is nothing worse than proof of Cullen's magn--" and here Aen's voice cracked through, a stifled note of hysteria, " _magnificent physique_." His breath dissolved to giggling, and there was the elf in him shown through, however muffled by his nose-high cowl.  
  
The last Cullen had seen of Aen Surana had been all the way back in the Free Marches, just before Champion Hawke's exploits had (by association) set Kirkwall to its ruination. Surana had looked as ragged, if not worse, as he had after the victory over the Blight, ravaged by Warden hardship, thinned and paled on constant travel through violent nightfall.

Aen had taken up the neverending hunt against bloodmages, it was reported; to pay a very old debt.  And those lifelong hunts never left the hunters very pretty for their victories.

It had been the Blight's defeat in Denerim, however, to cost Aen an arm and win him a limp, and that short career hunting the worst of the factioned bloodmages from their post-disaster resurgence within Ferelden borders had cost him the bottom corner of his face -- a hideous scarring dipped in from the side of his nose to his lower jaw, bone and teeth exposed quite gruesomely.  Aen now famously wore a thick cowling scarf high up his nose and cheeks to keep a poultice pressed close, and to catch his drool and this, perhaps, was what stayed Cullen's approach. Cullen was never very 'good' with Aen, forever uneasy with the fragility of the friendship they had fostered in their early years, forever guilty of the trials that friendship had been put through; and every time they spoke was Cullen a scattered mess, trapped between the hard dispassion of his professional facade and the terror of a man unexpectedly burdened by sentiment.

Aen Surana was a ruined shell of elven beauty, chewed up and crippled for nothing worse than his own perfect sense of justice and the deeds of a good heart, and Cullen couldn't hardly compose himself in front of such a stark reminder of everything Ferelden mages had to sacrifice only to be persecuted even harder by the people who were supposed to -- bah, there he went already, ruminating himself up to a glassy sting behind his eyes, nearly sick with guilt.  
  
Cullen had always  _known_  that mages were  _people,_ of course they were people, what else would they be? Nugs? But knowing Aen, knowing his dramas and his aspirations, his flaws; watching him grow and change and learn and  _become better,_ had led a young Cullen Rutherford to realize that mages could be  _good_ people. Not just 'harmless', not obedient or pious or subservient to the Maker's will, but actually, truly good -- self-sacrificing and honest and kind, and not 'kind' the way healers were generally kind, no (and Cullen knew his fair share of unkind healers, the pragmatic things) -- but kind in the way Aen Surana, as a powerful and dangerous force with which to reckon, didn't have to be. Kind in the way that begged nothing in return, a sort of indulgence that Solas often displayed, but warmer, like, in a way that sought to find a connection with others and not place Aen on any high pedestal of granting-thou-art.  
  
Aen himself begged plenty in return, of course, for his time or his friendship or his counsel -- but his kindness he gave up for free, even to those that might not exactly always deserve the granting of it. Besides the listening ear and the way Aen had always deferred to Cullen's authority even before Cullen himself knew he could wield authority at all; Aen had saved Cullen's life. Twice.  
  
They had shared, _Maker,_ so much - three years in one another's youth, an early partnership borne of the closed-circuit Circle routine, more than one terrible tragedy that to this day could still wake Cullen from a dead sleep to a half-strangled Templar casting. And now Aen Surana was here, hale and whole (for the most part) and laughing, sharing gossip with Cullen's latest batch of troublesome wards as if they were old college brothers and not... not whatever it was they were, the years and the distance and all the spilled blood between them; and Cullen couldn't face that, not yet, so Cullen had retreated, spry, behind this pile of carpets to wait for any good excuse to leave.  
  
"I only say this," Aen amended, raising his voice. "Because I heard your limp approach, Knight-Commander." And, ah, what did Aen even call Cullen, before Cullen was a Commander? Templar? Ser? Ser Templar? It was never his own name, no - too forward, too familiar, too steep an investment of regard between their stations.  Cullen had called Aen by his name, once, the night that Cullen lay fallen at the bottom of a set of stairs in a ruined Circle Tower, stripped down to his bloodied unders and left to twist in nightmarish thrall.  And Aen had answered with some surprise, uncertain that Cullen had ever heard him called anything but 'Surana', uncertain that Cullen wasn't possessed, that it wasn't some demon whispering Aen's name through the Fade.  And then Cullen had called Aen something a demon wouldn't gamble to assume, and the blurting of those two words haunted Cullen almost as deeply as the massacre to precede them.  
  
Lavellan's startled glare popped around the carpet pile. "Wind in my ears," he excused himself of not hearing Cullen's approach. "But the question was mine as recently, and this lout does nothing to enlighten us."  
  
"This lout," Blackwall corrected with his usual gruff, returning from a cookfire with a mug full of stew. "Only saved the whole of our mortal realm, Inquisitor. I think we could find room in our hearts to forgive some teasing, for all of that."  
  
Dorian, worryingly, was silent as Cullen stepped from his shelter to join the small gathering in the windless stay of the rampart. Dorian looked Cullen up and down, which delayed Cullen's attention from the man he was determined to greet with a firm, unworried handshake --  
  
But just as Cullen had not seen Aen, for all his current campaigning and Skyhold oversight; Aen had not seen Cullen -- or if he had, he had not recognized him in Inquisition armors, dressed by the years of high military office with which he'd been tasked, of his own scars and the worried gray in his hair. Where Cullen might expect a cheerfully gruesome embrace (he couldn't remember a day after Kinloch that Aen wasn't covered in the gore of his enemies, nor a day at all that Aen wasn't throwing an arm around the shoulders of the least appropriate candidate -- it was rumored he used to bed the King), Cullen hardly warranted a nod, just then; Aen stalled in his surprise.  
  
Aen attempted a recovery, for a greeting. "Ser, uh-" Not Knight-Commander. Not even Ser Templar. Not anymore.  
  
"Rutherford," Cullen drawled, the Ferelden nobility he'd left to become a Templar in the first place. And oh,  _hells_  and  _blast_  -- Cullen strode right through the group like a ship sluicing through the storm, and took Aen's dignified, bony crag of a body up in his embrace, Aen's soft-soled boots and hemmed woolen robes lifted clear of the flag stones.  
  
Lavellan coughed in surprise, a glad sound. Dorian and Blackwall shared a discomfited glance away, neither men very used to public displays of reunion.  
  
"Ow," Aen complained of Cullen's breastplate, but clapped his long, gloved arm over Cullen's shoulder gamefully, and patted the customary amount of pats between stoic veterans who knew one another when they were both neither stoic nor veteran nor even very smart; fools and beggars, young idiots drunk on idealism, demanding the world be better only to suit their judgement.

The sands of time swept past memories and left them buffed of their painful edges, polished of their flaws - Cullen remembered arguing with Aen, a few times, but couldn't for the life of him recall, just then on the wall, about what exactly they ever fought. He remembered when he and Aen were as far apart in opinion as Andraste was from mortal eyes, but couldn't summon any of those opinions to the forefront just now. Cullen better remembered all the good between them, Mage and Templar working in tandem to safely progress each other in skill, that terrible coup at Kinloch and waking to find the cruel dream of rescue become reality, the grueling nightmare of the Blight -- seeing, _sensing_  Warden Surana in battle, fighting beside him, easily segregating enemy energies from Aen's bright pop of feeling in the ether.

"Ow," Aen protested again, and Cullen loosened his grip.  
  
"The Inquisition is glad to have you," Cullen duly announced, that hard professional of him leaping forefront to overtake the chasm of emotional trauma that always opened up in Surana's company. He set Aen back to his feet, clapped Aen's empty shoulder in a chummy chuff as if there were still an arm there, and steadied the wobbling half-bow of Aen's lost balance.  
  
Dorian made a disgusted sound and turned to an abrupt departure. "Dull!" he argued, simply, hands thrown theatrically into the air as he navigated down the ramparts to rejoin a gaggle of mages set about their afternoon tea.  
  
"What's that about," Blackwall pondered, earnest in his confusion. "Soup innit that bad."

"Nobody believes me," Aen lamented within the privacy of Cullen's proximity, then, louder, "It's a fair enough question, though, Ser Tem-- uhh, Rutherford."  The pale blue of Aen's eyes glinted, and Cullen felt all of nineteen again, as if his only and greatest worry was the rumor mill.  "Why  _do_ you limp in the winter?"

Hells.  Blast.  Bloody buggering  _flames_.  'My love,' Cullen had said, crumpled there at the bottom of the stairs during the Kinlock massacre, run through on dreams of wonder and loss, ecstasy and horror, his best friend's face and voice and body worn by the demon those in revolt had summoned to haunt his rest, distort his waking. 

Cullen drew up, austere, and cleared his throat.  "As you said, Ser Warden."  And there was a hefty acknowledgement -- they were neither of them beholden to the office of Mage and Templar, not any more, and that carried a significance heavy enough to buckle the sturdy wall under their boots.  'My love,' Cullen had plead from the floor at the bottom of those stairs during the Kinloch massacre, hardly even a whisper through chapped and bloody lips, and he'd calmly asked to Aen to end it, so Aen had mounted those stairs determined to 'end it', indeed, and Cullen had felt the exact moment the last of the blood mages were dead, the barrier of his prison fallen, and Cullen had

climbed those stairs on hands and heels, certain he'd asked for a slaying of his own mortal self and not the miracle of a victory Aen and company had so blithely delivered, and

divested a fallen Templar of his sword and shield

barefoot in the puddles of blood and mana, Cullen had systematically assisted the Warden Alistair in the decapitations of the wounded, the demarcation of the corpses, to prevent possession.

And at the end of it all, Cullen had carried Aen down those stairs, through familiar halls overrun with gore and thinned in the veil, calmly discussing Aen's death should it turn out he were possessed after all, should he turn out to be the demon in Cullen's dreams in true, Aen's sly wit indulging Cullen's hard-won paranoia.  If he were a demon, Aen had argued, then he would have begged Cullen for such chivalry, would have demanded such affection, tried to draw a trade or deal, but there Cullen was offering his embrace up for free, embarrassing them both. 

Maybe I'm the demon, Cullen had argued, quite removed from his wits, and had shuffled Aen to the cleanest cot in his rooms to make a harried go at lovemaking before the Templars stormed the wings to slaughter them all for the off-chance Greigor hadn't survived.

"As you said, Ser Warden,"  Cullen now teased, a light note of warning to spare his personal dignity, since his professional dignity was no longer contingent on what he did or did not do with a mage.  "Nobody would believe it."

Blackwall guffawed, the rare break in his own somber mood, and pressed the stew into Cullen's hands.  "That's indecent, man," he congratulated, and was stood close enough now that Cullen could realize he was drunk.

Cullen, "Maker's Breath, it's not yet supper and you're in the cups."

"Winter," Blackwall said, simply, and chuffed his hands together.  "Might we take this conference inside, lads?"

"I'm due away to Josephine's." Lavellan shrugged, but here Cullen was feeling suddenly abandoned, and glanced down the ramparts, which were full of eyes pretending not to watch.

Cullen still had to set the example, ex-Templar and the kindness of Mages, and all that.  "I was just on my way to the summer office," he lied, evenly.  "For some spare vellum.  It's not the cozy fireside you're after, Blackwall, but it is shelter from the wind."  The summer office was Cullen's half-fallen quarters in one of the crenel towers of Skyhold's decayed fortress, appropriately named for the hole in the ceiling that made weathering any other season impossible.

Blackwall nodded, gaze gone distant with some puzzle or another.  He grunted, shrugged, took back his mug of soup.  "Commander, what's your direction for the day?"

"I just said -" Cullen started, "I plan to -" Aen lead, and their answers collided.

"Err," Cullen stepped away, shaking his head to clear the confusion.  "Warden Commander, of course," he said, a bit light-headed, dizzied by the winds that had blown his thoughts to the past.  "Well, gentlemen."  He clipped his heels together, ducked out a military half-bow.  "To your business."

"Tchah!  No gentlemans here," Blackwall said as Cullen passed down the ramparts, and hiccoughed.


End file.
